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mikenikles

45 karma · joined March 28, 2014

Building seaquel.app - Database Management, Reimagined.

25 years of helping businesses from 0 to 1. Now building my own product to do it all over again, solo.

Excellent developer experience leads to excellent customer experience.

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mikenikles··on .gitignore Everything by Default
Didn't read the article, but based on the title, I think it's a spelling mistake...

The author likely meant .dockerignore everything, that is the way to go.

mikenikles··on I've vibe coded an application to see what it's like
I did that too[1], twice[2] :-).

[1] https://seaquel.app

[2] https://github.com/webstonehq/tuxedo

mikenikles··on Show HN: Orchestrator – a single-binary workflow orchestration tool
Creator of Orchestrator here. Two things I want to share and ideally get feedback on:

1) Horizontal scaling via workers 2) Flow tasks as executable plugins written in any language

Horizontal scaling via workers The `orchestrator` binary either runs fully standalone (with the UI, scheduler, executor, etc) or as a worker that connects to a binary that runs in server mode. The latter allows horizontal scaling by simply starting the binary in worker mode on any machine.

Flow tasks as executable plugins written in any language There's a http plugin I provide by default (others to come depending on demand). Any other task type is a separate plugin executable that provides a manifest that declares the UI elements and plugin execution code. The server (or workers) communicate with plugins over a small newline-delimited JSON protocol on stdin/stdout. Not as fast as in-process, but extensible without any code modifications in Orchestrator.

mikenikles··on Show HN: Tuxedo – A fast, keyboard-driven terminal UI for todo.txt
Thank you for the feedback and bug report! The bug is fixed in version 2026.5.5.

I also added a `/` command in a todo's input field to add metadata more visually. There's also a new `:` command palette.

mikenikles··on Do you even need a database?
Of course it is :).
mikenikles··on Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th
A database client better than Datagrip is a tough one, yet I'm attempting to do just that [1] :).

I'm in month 4 of development, working on it full-time.

[1] https://seaquel.app

mikenikles··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)
Month 4 of building a data management platform called Seaquel [1].

Months 1-3 were about building a desktop client. Now I'm working on a server binary customers can optionally self-host to share dashboards publicly and run workflow automations.

[1] https://seaquel.app/

mikenikles··on Show HN: CSS Studio. Design by hand, code by agent
I added an interactive demo to my product's landing page [1], thinking people would prefer that over yet another product video.

However, your comment hit me... :-) I'm going to record a video!

[1] https://seaquel.app

mikenikles··on Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?
Oh wait... haha your source doesn't match your professional experience :). My offer still stands though.
mikenikles··on Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?
How about this counter offer? I give you 50% of the revenue for any sale you make for https://seaquel.app. If you tell me we need a lifetime offer, consider it done.
mikenikles··on Astral to Join OpenAI
I'm curious what you think of https://seaquel.app as a DataGrip alternative.

It's a project I'm working on to build a database management product I've always wanted.

I spend way too much time obsessing over UX but hope people appreciate it :).

mikenikles··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)
I build Seaquel, the database client I've always wished I had. It's open source, works offline and doesn't track what you do.

It has a visual query builder and separate SQL tutorial.

https://seaquel.app

mikenikles··on Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix
How does it compare to the existing Devbox project (https://www.jetpack.io/devbox)?

Does Flox have an optional cloud solution as well? Can Flox install specific versions of Nix packages? What about OS-specific dependencies?

I've worked with tools like that for 5 years. Curious to understand what Flox brings to the table that we don't already have.

mikenikles··on PackagingCon – A conference only for software package management
I've spent the last year managing all my packages with Devbox (https://github.com/jetpack-io/devbox).

Local dev, cloud dev, CI, production – all with the same config file. Fingers crossed my talk submission for PackagingCon gets accepted. It'd be awesome to share this new way of working with a wider audience.

mikenikles··on Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?
https://www.mikenikles.com/

Best to follow me on Twitter or Bluesky though for up-to-date full-stack web development opinions.

mikenikles··on Codespaces but open-source, client-only, and unopinionated
Local first, cloud optional is the only way (IMHO) we're going to get people off their local laptop development setups.

We need to support local dev environments first, with the exact same config a developer can then move to the cloud.

See https://github.com/jetpack-io/devbox for how this can be achieved and https://www.mikenikles.com/blog/dev-environments-in-the-clou... for my thoughts after 3 years of working in this space.

mikenikles··on Ending support for self-hosted Gitpod and moving our source to AGPL
What about multi-region for anyone who has a remote team?
mikenikles··on VS Code in the Browser for Everyone
Hi, Mike from Gitpod here. This project does not use code-server. It is instead a very lightweight server added to the official open source VS Code repo from Microsoft.

We documented this in more detail in the "Source Code Organization" chapter at https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server/blob/main/doc....

As to where to submit PRs:

- Anything to do with running VS Code in a server context: gitpod-io/openvscode-server

- Anything else related to VS Code: microsoft/vscode

We have no intention of changing VS Code in any way or to add additional features to VS Code itself.

mikenikles··on Gitpod shipped GitHub a launch cake for Codespaces
Thanks for the many details! We continue to investigate that...

I noticed the same with the Brave browser a few months ago, but when we dropped Google Analytics it worked with Brave.

Diving deeper into what uBlock Origin does...

Thanks!

mikenikles··on Gitpod shipped GitHub a launch cake for Codespaces
That's on me, although I haven't quite figured out what causes it :). It's all static pages.

I'm going to completely remove all Javascript on pages that don't need it, which is most of them.

Investigation continues...

mikenikles··on Show HN: Cloud Native Web Development – I self-published my first book
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, I actually learned quite a bit of details for the tools & technologies I write about. Teaching / writing is the best way to learn!

It was 3 months part-time. Evenings and weekends almost exclusively though.

As for marketing, I am planning to write a blog post and/or video series where I explain my journey, what I learned, the tools I used, share scripts I wrote to make my life easier.

It's been a fantastic learning experience and I hope my story will encourage others.